


start again in the month of may

by baliset



Category: Blaseball (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, The Trench, dead garages found family time, ghost on ghost violence, incineration related anxiety and angst, null team, seattle garages
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 01:15:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28156677
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/baliset/pseuds/baliset
Summary: His hands shake whenever he’s at the plate, now. He has to hold his bat with a white-knuckled grip, because he’s afraid of dropping it, afraid it will draw the umpire’s attention and that’ll be the thing that gets him, the split-second mistake that gets him killed. Shaq is too conscious of where their body is all the time now, even when they’re safe at first or just taking up space in the dugout. They’re conscious of having to smile for the fans who came out to see them, of being the same as they’ve always been - not very good at either blaseball or video games but having fun trying.(or: shaquille torres has a hell of a week.)
Relationships: Shaquille Torres & Bennett Browning, Shaquille Torres & Derrick Krueger, Shaquille Torres & Tiana Cash
Comments: 10
Kudos: 20





	start again in the month of may

**Author's Note:**

> shaq uses he/they pronouns!

Shaquille Torres would rather be doing anything but playing blaseball.

They didn’t feel that way, back in Season 1. Things were fun, then. He liked taking time off from streaming to travel to other stadiums and hang out with the band, to set up makeshift shows during the postseason and kick Malik’s ass at Mario Kart when they were supposed to be practicing. It was all just something to do, something to make a fat paycheck off of so he could go home and play Clone Hero until two in the morning and watch his Twitch subscriber count climb up into the hundreds, then the thousands. The publicity of being in the Garages meant more eyes on everything else Shaq was doing, so more eyes on their streams. It was good. A tidy system. A nice payout.

Then the Book opened, obviously, and things changed. Jaylen was the only casualty from the Garages in Season 2, but Season 3 takes Bennett from them, then Tiana, in what feels like rapid succession. Two funerals in just over a month. Watching Bennett go up in flames just for pausing a little too long to talk to a fan in the outfield makes Shaq question if they even like the game anymore, and watching Tiana burn while doing nothing but standing at second base just confirms it. He doesn’t want to be here.

His hands shake whenever he’s at the plate, now. He has to hold his bat with a white-knuckled grip, because he’s afraid of dropping it, afraid it will draw the umpire’s attention and that’ll be the thing that gets him, the split-second mistake that gets him killed. Shaq is too conscious of where their body is all the time now, even when they’re safe at first or just taking up space in the dugout. They’re conscious of having to smile for the fans who came out to see them, of being the same as they’ve always been - not very good at either blaseball or video games but having fun trying. 

Only, it’s not fun anymore. Even when he’s at home, sitting in front of his webcam and thousands of subscribers, Shaq still feels like he’s going to die.

***

When it finally happens, no one’s expecting it, so no one’s paying attention. Shaq is playing their Switch in the dugout while someone else - maybe Avila - is up at bat, and he hears someone on the field yelp, and he looks up, and then all he sees is light. It’s so fast that it barely hurts. There’s a flash of heat that feels like it’s coming from inside of them, like their bones are trying to burn their way out of their skin, and Shaq has time to wonder if this is how Tiana and Bennett felt, but they don’t have time to scream.

They finally scream when they feel their body hit ground, cold and whole again, and they don’t stop screaming. Shaq presses his forehead into the dirt of what might be a field of Elysium, or might be a regular blaseball field somewhere else, and clutches himself, and screams his throat raw. It’s more frustration than anything. The one time he let his guard down, the one time he thought he could take his eyes off the field, of course an umpire would go rogue. Of course he would be the one to go.

“Hey, it’s okay,” someone says from somewhere above them. 

Shaq can feel the presence of another person hovering there, near his back, and instinctively straightens up to look. His glasses are fogged and blurry, one lens a little cracked, but he can see the shape of someone short and fat in a gray uniform, offering him a hand. He takes it, and lets the (surprisingly strong) stranger tug him to his feet.

“Torres? Is that your name?” xe asks, once Shaq is face to face with xem. Xe’s got long black hair pulled into a practical braid, and Shaq swears he can see fangs in xer mouth. There’s a name on the tip of his tongue that he can’t quite retrieve.

“Yeah,” he says instead.

“Alex Dracaena,” xe says, with a crooked smile. “Welcome to the Trench.”

Shaq feels their mouth fill with questions. They don’t have time to let any loose before someone else’s body crashes into theirs and knocks the wind out of them, simultaneously bowling them over and holding them steady with a pair of arms flung around their middle.

“Shaq!” a muffled voice near his armpit says, so elated that it almost feels inappropriate.

“Shaq!” another voice yells from across the field, and then someone _else_ is slamming into him, and Shaq finds himself sandwiched between two warm bodies clinging to him like a life preserver.

Dracaena is gone - vanished somewhere - by the time that Shaq realizes the two people hugging him are Tiana and Bennett. He tries to hug them back, but they’ve got his arms pinned to his sides, so he mostly just stands there and lets it happen. It’s as nice of a welcome into the afterlife as he could have expected. Maybe this is what having a good death actually means - having people to meet you on the other side who care about you more than you expected.

“Shaq, I’m so sorry,” Tiana says, her face pressed against his shoulder.

“Hey,” Shaq says, finally working an arm free to muss Bennett’s hair. “You losers didn’t miss me, did you?”

Bennett looks up at him, their eyes half obscured by their mop of dark curls, and blows a raspberry. “Of course we missed you, idiot.”

“Good thing I died, then,” Shaq says, smirking. He winces as he feels Tiana’s knuckles come down on his head, digging into his scalp, her other arm hooked around his neck.

“Don’t say that, asshole,” she says. She’s half-laughing as she says it, though. “You didn’t get incinerated just to come see us.”

“I would never lie to you,” Shaq promises, lying through their teeth. He squirms in the headlock. “Oh man, Tiana. The band wrote a song about you. I gotta play it for you later.”

“What!” Bennett says.

“What?” Tiana’s voice cracks. She sounds genuinely taken off guard.

“Yeah, you’ll hate it.” Shaq finally worms out of Tiana’s grip, running their fingers through their undercut to try and coax it back into shape. 

This all feels...natural, in a way they didn’t think it would. Now that they’re here, they’re not so sure what there was to be afraid of besides that single moment of dying, those few seconds of feeling their body be set ablaze. They thought it would last longer. That it would feel more momentous, or final. That there would be nothing afterwards. But it really felt like stepping through a door to leave a party, and finding old friends waiting for them just outside.

Shaq straightens up, shoves their hands in their pockets. “Dracaena said this place was called the Trench?”

“Yeah,” Bennett says. “It’s where all the dead people go, as far as we can tell?” 

“Jaylen here?” Shaq asks.

“Yeah,” Tiana says, lifting a finger to point towards the mound. “She pitches sometimes. She doesn’t talk to us.”

That sounds about right. Shaq can’t remember ever having a conversation with Jaylen that was more than six syllables. Not much has changed at all.

“We’ve got our own rooms and stuff,” Bennett chimes in. Their voice has a touch of nervousness in it, maybe at the mention of Jaylen - it’s hard to tell. “But mostly we play ball.”

“Tell me about it,” Shaq says, and they do.

***

Time passes strangely in the Trench. There aren’t any clocks, and the action on the field slows down and speeds up in apparently random increments. When they get to sleep or take breaks feels just as random, arbitrary rest periods inserted in the day whenever the thing that keeps track of the Null Team (Bennett says it’s called the Monitor) remembers to tell Nora to tell the rest of the team to stop playing.

Shaq can measure out the hours if they feel like it. _Be The Cowboy_ is 32 minutes long, so playing _Be The Cowboy_ twice, back to back, in his head, is roughly an hour. Or playing _Be The Cowboy_ once and _Pet Sounds_ once. Or playing _Stop Making Sense_ all the way through. Shaq has a lot of albums stored in his mind, which gives him a lot of ways to measure the time when he’s not trying to keep up with batting or fielding.

Shaq learns quickly that the Trench will put them where it wants them, so they don’t have to worry about jogging to or from the dugout when the inning changes over. They get used to the sensation of being on the field, then abruptly being at home plate with a bat in their hands. It’s actually sort of nice, not having to worry about where to run or where they’re taking up space. There are no umpires in the Trench, and that’s nice, too. No looking over your shoulder, wondering which mistake is the one that gets you burnt alive, because you’ve already made that mistake and it sent you here.

Four people follow Shaq to the Trench, right on their heels. A Shoe Thief, then two Fridays and a Spy in one day. It gets busier on the field. The people who died in Season 2 or earlier in Season 3 want to help the new arrivals acclimate, and the new arrivals are antsy, and Shaq suddenly feels like old news. Bennett and Tiana have given him the tour, and he’s got his own room picked out for when the Null Team isn’t playing, but it all still feels fresh and temporary, like a hotel the band is staying at on the road to somewhere else. Like his brain hasn’t caught up to the fact that this is home now.

It’s quiet for a few days after the two Fridays drop in, and then there’s another new arrival. It happens the same way it usually happens. There’s a flash and a crack like lightning striking the field, the heavy smell of smoke, and a body face-down on the ground. Shaq’s close enough to watch the color leech out of the newbie’s jersey and turn Null Team grey, but not quite close enough to realize they’re a Garage until he sees Tiana sprinting across the field, her braids sparking with blue fire at their ends. She drops to her knees in the grass, dark-skinned hands skirting over the new arrival’s back, finally grabbing him by the collar and tugging his face out of the grass.

“Derrick, oh my God,” Shaq hears Tiana murmuring as he ambles towards her. “Fuck. I’m so sorry.”

“Derrick!” Bennett says, skidding to a stop nearby. They push their hood back and look around, eyes catching Tiana’s and Shaq’s in turn. “Shit, that’s four of us now.” A beat. “And Jaylen.”

Derrick Krueger sits up on his knees, spits out a mouthful of mud, and says nothing. He reaches up to wipe the dirt from his face, but mostly just smears it around, his eyes such a clear gray that they’re almost colorless.

Shaq never afforded much mental real estate to Derrick. Barely even bothered to learn his name, or who he was besides the pitcher who replaced Jaylen. It seems almost unfair for him to get incinerated, when he hardly did anything except fade into the background, but that’s blaseball.

“Hey, Krueger,” Shaq says, lifting a hand in greeting. “I thought you were tired of getting Jaylen’s sloppy seconds.”

It’s the wrong thing to say, and they know it as soon as it leaves their mouth. They know it even more half a second later, when all six-foot-something of Derrick Krueger tackles them into the mud.

Shaq hasn’t felt pain since the brief moment of their incineration. They’ve only been in the Trench for a week, maybe less, but time here is sticky enough that when Derrick’s fist makes contact with their ribs, it feels novel. It makes Shaq shriek out a noise that might be a laugh. Derrick’s taller than he is, but Shaq’s wider and sturdier, so when Derrick drops his whole weight onto them they catch him by the forearms and roll until they’re on top. They sit on his chest, panting, bleach-fried hair hanging in their face.

They’ve never been in a fight before. It’s kind of fun, actually. Or it would be, if the ground was less muddy. It snows on the field sometimes, and leaves everything slippery and cold like it is today. Shaq can feel that his uniform is already soaked through in the back, and they’re sure that Derrick’s is, too.

“You good?” they ask Derrick.

“No,” Derrick hisses, his teeth still full of dirt, and reaches up to hook his fingers in Shaq’s septum piercing.

“Hey,” Shaq yelps, and pulls away - which is the wrong thing to do when a guy’s got his finger through your septum piercing.

“ _Ow_ ,” he says, reaching down to smack Derrick’s face.

Derrick lets go of his piercing in response, but Shaq smacks him again for good measure, mostly trying to get Derrick to smack him back. It works, kind of. Derrick grabs their wrist and twists it, gripping them hard by the elbow and throwing them off him with such force that it knocks the wind out of Shaq in an audible wheeze.

“ _Now_ I’m good,” Derrick says, with some amount of satisfaction in his voice.

“Ow,” Shaq says, again. Their glasses are all fucked up from rolling around on the ground, and they’re too out of breath to try anything stupid, so they just lie there on their back.

Derrick does the same. The two of them lie there, side by side in the mud, for such a long time that Shaq is surprised the Trench doesn’t suddenly decide to move one or both of them to the dugout, or somewhere else on the field. He’s also surprised that Bennett and Tiana never tried to separate the two of them, but they probably know better than to get between two fistfighting Garages. Or ex-Garages, technically.

“I’ve never been in a fight before,” Shaq finally says.

“I have,” Derrick says. “You’re not good at it.”

“You fight dirty.” Shaq reaches over to shove Derrick, leaving a smear of mud across the chest of his new jersey. “Fucker.”

Derrick shoves them back, pushing their head to one side. “You started it.”

“Yeah. Yeah,” Shaq says. They don’t really have anything smart to say to that. They did start it - and they should’ve known better than to treat Derrick like a member of the Garages they could joke with like that. Especially about Jaylen.

“Are we cool?” they ask, because they’re not going to apologize if they don’t have to.

Derrick sighs. “Yeah. We’re cool.”

“Sorry about the warm reception.”

“I’d give it a five out of ten,” Derrick says, and his voice is so carefully flat that it startles a laugh up from Shaq’s gut. 

“Welcome to the Trench, Krueger,” he says, holding a filthy fist up and hovering it just over his chest.

Derrick reaches over to bump it with his own dirty knuckles. It’s better than apology and acceptance. Feels more real, somehow. Like another friend leaving the party and coming outside.

**Author's Note:**

> i care about ALL the dead garages, and i'm taking you ALL down with me
> 
> title is from 'month of may' by arcade fire, you can find me on twitter @corpserevivers or in the crabitat discord server! comments and etc are as always appreciated!


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